Friday, January 13, 2012

RINJ is an international organization that seeks removal of web and other media content that condones sexual violence. We agree with its mission. It is a serious victim's advocacy group.

RINJ today expressed interest in beefing up the laws against false rape claims. Needless to say, we applaud these efforts. We have long believed that the false rape problem hurts not only the innocent persons falsely accused but rape victims as well. The following is from RINJ's Facebook page dated Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 7:45pm:

"In the discussion of creating a law that makes a criminal offence of a false allegation of rape, we see the emergence of some of the reasons victims are reluctant to report a crime against them. If false allegation of rape were implemented in the Criminal Code of the commomnwealth of nations, prosecutors would not need to find such "tricky" roundabout methods to prosecute these crimes. Moreover, defence attornies for alleged rapists will not be able to invoke some airy-fairy urban legend about false allegations but instead, both sides of the court and the jury will have bona fide statistics based on a statute's implementation.

"We submit that the number of false allegations of rape is small but that in each case the consequences are horrific and create a victim who in some minds is no less damaged than a rape victim. We further advance that the penalty for a person convicted of making false allegations of rape be commensurate with those issued to actual rape offenders.

"We have two goals in mind. We want juries to be more free to convict rapists in a comfort zone provided by law and case law with strict maximum penalties for false allegations and good litmus tests for fact finding.

"Secondly, because the method for dealing with false allegations is wishy-washy at best, providing a good law will alleviate the ambiguity. Too many people throw the word around like it was a swear word. That must end. Don't scream "fire" unless there is a fire. Don't scream "rape" unless there is a "rape". We want all rapes reported and hence need to to remove the fear victims have that they will not be believed.

"Because it is so easily done and because there are no statistics available about false rape allegations, creating law to deal specifically with false allegations will benefit our mission in ending rape. We will all have useful statistics that will likely show false allegations to be rare and done only by easily identifiable character types. Rape is no joke. The word should never be used unless in the case of a "Rape"."

RINJ dot Org has invited all interested parties to participate in a Facebook discussion in which RINJ has advanced the argument that there should be a separate law that allows for the prosecution of false allegation of rape.